Up and Down Again

The end of 2009 and the start of 2010 covered a range of emotions from extreme happiness to absolute despair. I will start with a happy event in September. My son and daughter in law had their (I hope) first child, a beautiful little boy, so naturally I was suffering from acute proud grandfather syndrome.

Arlo New Year 2010 They are currently living in Genoa so a trip to Italy for Christmas and New Year was obviously the thing to do. This is where things started to go downhill a bit. We had booked Easyjet flights from Bristol to Milan for the 22nd December. We spent nearly 7 hours a Bristol Airport and were then called to the departure gate to be told the flight was cancelled and they had no seats available until the 28th December. At that moment all Easyjet staff disappeared. We eventually returned home at 9pm and went to our neighbours to reclaim the food we had given them. We are now in a battle with Easyjet to get our money back, I know they are cheap but my experience is that they are also rubbish when there are any problems.

We managed to get a flight with British Airways from gatwick to Turin on Christmas Eve and had a delightful Christmas and New Year with the family.

After New Year we went to Florence for a few days, what a fantastic place! I must admit that by the end I was suffering from cultural overload, there is a limit to how many Bottecelli style babies and heads of John the Baptist I can take and as the Lonely Planet guide points out lots of statues on men with "diddy dinkles".

We returned to Gatwick to retrieve our car. Yes it is in there somewhere. Of course the de-icer and scrapers etc are in the car and all the doors are frozen shut. But once it was dug out the trip home was uneventful.

Arriving home at 7.30 in the evening and I opened the door to find the hall a couple of inches deep in water and it flowing down the stairs. A connection to the shower in the roof had broken some days previously. I am told it did get down to -12.8C but the heating had been left on.

The current score is the bathroom, dining room and part of the kitchen ceilings have gone and our bedroom and top landing ceilngs will have to be removed. The hall and dining room floors have gone and we are not sure about the kitchen. All the carpets have gone with the exception of a spare bedroom and the sitting room.

Our insurance company RSA have been brilliant right from the person who took my first call right throught to our assesor and their appointed surveyor. A local company Rainbow International did the clearance and are drying out the house and they have been excellent.

We are still in the house and it is likely to be some months before we get back to normal. Hopefully from now on all progress will be upward. Will I go away next Christmas? Now that is a good question.